After his PhD at the London School of Economics, Roland taught at the University of Aberdeen for 16 years. Roland joined the Department in 2005 as a Professor of Politics and International Relations. He held visiting appointments at Heidelberg University (Germany); Karl-Franzens University Graz (Austria); University of California, Los Angeles; and Deakin University, Melbourne. In 2011, he was a visiting professor at the University of Queensland in Brisbane (Australia). Currently, he is a visiting fellow at the Sydney Democracy Initiative at Sydney University.

PO-238Normative Models of Democracy: Contemporary Perspectives

What is 'democracy'? Why 'democracy'? Ought we to praise, or bury, 'democracy'? There has been a wide range of answers to these questions: 'democracy' is an 'essentially contested concept'. This module examines contemporary conceptualizations of 'democracy' and discusses how 'democracy' has been imagined in different, and often conflicting, ways. In the course of the module, we will encounter and exam concepts such as the people (the demos) and popular sovereignty; citizenship; negative and positive liberties; interest and the common good; plurality and diversity; civil society, the public sphere and deliberation; participation and representation; the state, power, and authority.

PO-3110Visions of Democracy

This module will examine how 'democracy' has been imagined in different, and sometimes conflicting, ways. It will survey a range of theoretical conceptualisations of democracy but it also pays due attention to actual political struggles out of which visions of democracy emerge. It will assess: the ways in which liberalism and democracy can be reconciled; republicanism, communitarianism and radical visions of direct and participatory democracy; mulitcultural, deliberative and agonal conceptions of democracy; mean of accommodating diversity; and visions of 'global democracy', 'global civil society' and 'democracy beyond the state'.

PO-M36Approaches to Political Theory

This module will give students an opportunity to engage with a cross-section of the wide variety of methodological and epistemological debates that help constitute the field of political theory as a discipline.